Day 25: Almost There

There’s always a point where you have to let a story go. Art isn’t finished, as many people before me have pointed out, only abandoned. And eventually you abandon your new child and hope that you’ll get it right next time, or the time after that, and you never do. –NEIL GAIMAN

This was the advice today at Jon Winokaur’s blog, Advice to Writers. It was fitting. No, Bethany, you do not need to read the novel one more time.

And, for National Poetry Month…it was a another day in which I didn’t get a chance to look at the poetry assignment. But, somewhere in there, midday (sitting in my car, looking at the water), I wrote this:

Who knew the ocean could be so implacable–
implacable, a word that has nothing

to do with plaits, with implicate, for instance,
with inextricable, with intricate. The ocean

waves are like braids undone, or like pleats
of a skirt unfolded, coming undone, white caps

not like demure Puritan caps with their tucks and embroidery,
but maybe like Victorian petticoats

or knickers…implacable as in constantly assailed,
unassailable if only in the sense

of not caring at all for the assault,
for your fingers tapping along with its pulse.